counting on a future (a TiMER-verse AU)
by ellabellbee
Summary: If someone in Storybrooke had the silver glow of numbers on their wrist, they never noticed that the numbers were caught in an infinite random loop, never realized that the TiMERs weren't counting down at all. Except for Regina's. Her TiMER counted down toward her soulmate and it upset her that it showed any numbers at all. (SQ Week Jan 2015 Day 5: Soulmates. Originally on ao3)
1. Chapter 1: Regina

**Written for Swan Queen Week Jan 2015, Day 5: Soulmates. Originally posted on ao3 in January, posting here for archival reasons. Thank you to Racethewind_10 and Typey for the betas and fixing all my tenses. Extra thanks to Race for** **demanding that I** **convincing me to write chapter 2. Any remaining mistakes are my own.**

* * *

 **Chapter 1: Regina**

* * *

It was one of those things that came with the curse and the move to the world without magic, like inherently knowing how to drive or who was president or what season of _The Bachelor_ they were in. It was also one of the things that everyone seemed to know and talk about but couldn't quite figure out that something just wasn't. quite. right.

Because if someone in Storybrooke had the silver glow of numbers on their wrist, they never actually noticed that the numbers were just caught in an infinite random loop, never realized that the TiMERs weren't actually counting _down_ at all.

Except for Regina's. Her TiMER counted down toward her soulmate, and it upset her that it showed any numbers at all.

* * *

Storybrooke had existed for just over a year when she breached the town's boundaries and made her way to a nearby city. It was half curiosity and half escapism that drove her out – a desire to see the land beyond her curse's borders and a need to be unknown, unnoticed, for just one night.

She should have known that the only thing she wanted she could not have, because sitting alone at a hotel bar apparently meant she wanted attention, and that apparent desire for company was interpreted in two different ways: either her TiMER was about to go off and she wanted one last fling, or her TiMER was going off so far in the future that she was lonely and looking for casual sex.

The first man to sit beside her was already drunk enough that he thought grabbing her arm and pulling up the sleeve on her sweater was acceptable behaviour. She threw her drink in his face but not until he already announced to the entire bar that her numbers read twenty-six years.

Four men approached with just as much luck before a very pretty woman in her forties slid onto the next barstool. Regina was about to glare at the intrusion but the woman briefly exposed her own wrist. "I get it," she said warmly, and Regina gave her a single nod when she made out that there were still ten years left in her countdown.

They sat in silence for the next fifteen minutes, finishing their drinks and then ordering another, until the woman caught her eye, and with a raised eyebrow, a quirk of her lips, and an incline of her head asked Regina the same question she'd been asked all night.

This time Regina answered with a single nod, and followed the other woman to her room.

* * *

"I knew he wasn't my soulmate," Kathryn confessed to Regina about her missing husband. "Neither of our TiMERS had gone off yet, but we both just got so tired of waiting. It was nice to have someone to come home to, even if it wasn't supposed to be forever. It was nice, for once, to just not be so..."

She trailed off and Regina completed her thought. "Lonely."

Kathryn's smile was watery and sad but looked like relief. "But I suppose I'm lonely again." She shrugged. "We did grow to love each other. I think I'd be okay with him leaving if I knew that it was because he met his soulmate, but..." she broke eye contact and instead gazed out the window. "He should still be counting down too."

Kathryn gestured to her wrist, to the numbers that appeared with no pattern at all, and Regina tugged down on her blazer sleeve to cover the twenty-four.

It was not the first time they'd had this conversation.

It wouldn't be the last.

* * *

She left Storybrooke again, this time going to a slightly more upscale hotel. Sadly, the price of the Manhattans did not translate to the quality of people at the bar. Perhaps they were a little less brazen, less vulgar, but the meaning behind everyone's inquiry was the same: how much time do you have left?

She bought a specialty watch that trip – one with a wide strap designed to hide the numbers, hide her loneliness, hide that she still had twenty-two years to go.

She didn't go to bed alone that time either, but she was still lonely.

* * *

"How do you think the TiMERs work?"

The voice was younger and less jaded than one she would normally expect at such a classy bar and it caught Regina's interest. The young man the voice belonged to was probably only just over twenty-one – even though his body displayed all the signs of manhood, his eyes betrayed his innocence.

He was directing his questions to a man probably in his late twenties not too far from where she was sitting, and she found herself listening to their conversation. "The company says it's all about analysing data, but that never made sense to me."

"Right? It could be data analysis if it was just like a dating service and was matching people up, but how do they know _when_ you're going to meet? How did they even figure out what soulmates were?"

Regina rolled her eyes. She had apparently done the research in greater detail than some of the people from this world, those who had undergone the procedure willingly – not that it even seemed like a choice, any more. But people in this world had always believed in soulmates; before the TiMERs they had read tea leaves and studied the stars and looked at auras and paid shamans to play matchmaker. For a world without magic, Regina found this all incredibly gullible. And yet...

"It's not the _who_ that I wonder about," the younger man said. "I trust that. It's that –" Regina saw him gesture to his wrist and he only had about 18 hours left. "It's like I'm going to be hyper aware tomorrow, and I won't have any control over any decision I make. Even though I think I have free will, everything I do will just be bringing me closer and closer to her."

Regina drummed her figures on the bar top and took a slow sip of her drink. It had been a long time since she pondered free will versus destiny, and it wasn't something that she particularly wanted to wade into right now. Not when her own destiny was still twenty years away.

She had almost blocked out the rest of the conversation when the older man finally snapped at the younger, "Well then how do _you_ think it works? Pixie dust?"

Regina couldn't tell if her tears were from laughing or crying.

* * *

Most people got their TiMERs at about the time they reached puberty, she learned. It could be a bit before or a bit after depending on how much money was available to them, but for the most part, everyone got one. She had seen how society acted towards those that refused them: disdain, superiority, condescension, and even abuse. It was horrible.

Yet even seeing that, knowing what happened to those without a TiMER, Regina wanted to wish she didn't have one; yet, she did, and so she had to settle for trying to forget it existed it all. Forget it existed, forget that she had a soulmate out there who wasn't her Daniel, forget that hers had been counting down from twenty-eight years.

She clung to the hope that Daniel didn't register as her soulmate only because he had never made it to this realm. That maybe there _was_ someone from this world who could help fill the emptiness that she felt inside. That maybe because she wasn't from this world the rules were a little different. That maybe she _could_ have two soulmates.

Her research had told her that the numbers wouldn't appear on the TiMER until both people had theirs installed, so somewhere out there where time moved properly, there was someone whose countdown matched her own. She tried to picture a person who would have gotten their TiMER before she had hers, who continued to age even though she was here, stuck in time...

It was also extremely possible that her TiMER worked differently because of the curse, because time moved differently in Storybrooke so she didn't have to wait for her soulmate to get their TiMER for hers to start counting. Maybe some things were destined, no matter when a small piece of technology was installed.

She briefly thought of a lion tattoo from long ago and wondered if he could possibly be in her town this whole time and she had just never come across him, but she dismissed that thought. According to the company, there was nothing she could do to speed up the process.

She just had to wait for another eighteen years.

But that was okay. With the curse, she had all the time in the world.

* * *

Having all the time in the world, in a word, sucked.

The monotony was tiresome. The power that she exerted over the people of the Enchanted Forest didn't seem to mean as much as it used to. It meant even less when she examined that they didn't choose to obey her; that it was written into the curse.

The adage about the watched pot that never boils existed in her old world too, and she began to hate the numbers that changed on her wrist when no one else's did in this miserable existence.

The next time she went beyond the town's borders, she bought every piece of jewellery, watch, and cuff that she could find to hide the countdown. Apparently she wasn't the only one to want to hide them, as there were entire stores devoted to them – ones that she could wear in the shower, and sleeping, and to formal events... all so that she never had to see the numbers taunting her.

All so that she didn't have to have a visual reminder of how unhappy she was.

(She pretended that it helped. It didn't.)

* * *

As much as she despised the numbers, Regina couldn't stop thinking about them and spent far more time than she wanted wondering how the TiMERs worked in Storybrooke.

When she took away everyone's happy ending, so many families were split apart. Sure, there were entire towns and villages in the Enchanted Forest that came along with the curse that she had no qualms with, and so they were mostly left untouched. They continued living their unimportant existences in their menial labour jobs with their families and blank TiMERs. But then there were the people like Kathryn, whom Regina knew had definitely bumped into Fred before, and Mary Margaret who volunteered at the hospital and so must have seen her precious Charming.

But David was in a coma, and while Abigail and Frederick were probably soulmates, did that automatically mean that Kathryn and Fred would be? Was a soulmate even the same thing in this world as they believed it to be in the old one?

Was having a soulmate the same thing as having a True Love?

She supposed that maybe their TiMERs weren't going off because of the curse, because they currently were not who they truly were. Maybe their souls didn't recognize each other.

So maybe her man with the lion tattoo was here in town. Maybe she had run across him already, but with the curse hiding his true identity, but her soul couldn't recognize him. But then that meant...

That meant that her TiMER was counting down to the prophesied end of the curse.

She shuddered.

She then started asking around to find if anyone in Storybrooke matched the description, but everything she did came up empty. She planned a community festival on one of the hottest days of the summer so that she could investigate everyone's arms. She filed a false police report with Graham saying that she had been assaulted in the street, and the only thing she had seen was the tattoo.

And still.

She would just have to be ready if it came to that. It was far more likely that she would venture outside of Storybrooke that day. Besides, she had fourteen years to figure it out.

* * *

"Do you think that maybe we were all better off before TiMERs?"

Regina looked up from her fourth drink at the bar. The stranger was well dressed, about her physical age, and clearly at the point in his evening where the alcohol and tiredness gave way to introspection. She finished her drink and motioned for another, sitting back in her chair and giving the man her attention. She had nothing better to do that night.

"Just that..." he trailed off and showed her his wrist, the numbers showing eighteen years to go and on reflex she touched her own wrist, the numbers exposed after her watch strap broke on her way out of town. "Just that maybe if we weren't waiting for a soulmate, we could have found happiness somewhere else. Who says that you can only find happiness with one person, huh?"

"I had happiness," she answered, startling herself with her honesty. "I…" she hesitates – how do you explain growing up in a different realm? "I got my TiMER late, and before I had it, I was in love."

"What happened?"

Her eyes cast back down to her drink. "He died. But I loved him without anything telling me that I should. I loved him in spite of everything telling me that I shouldn't."

"And now?"

"I have a void in my heart, one that cannot be filled," she said, echoing those words lodged in her mind from so long ago. They brought back memories, none of them pleasant. Realizing the silence was growing strained Regina forced her attention back to her conversation partner and continued. "The TiMER says I'll find my soulmate in twelve years. But I don't want to dishonour him, to believe that it wasn't real because a machine told me differently."

The man was silent, and Regina stared back into the depths of her drink before finishing it. She needed to keep her level of inebriation for this conversation to continue.

She was startled when the man spoke again. "I'll be old by the time I meet my soulmate. If she's the same age as me, I'll have lost my chance for a family. I thought that maybe I could find someone who was in the same situation as me, that we could make it work until our soulmates came along, that I could still be a father... but can you imagine what society would do to that kid? We'd be social outcasts. The kid would hate me."

The man was almost passing out into his drink by this point and the bartender cut him off, making a pointed suggestion that he go to his room on his own, but Regina wasn't paying attention anymore. Instead, she was fixated on the one part of the conversation that she hadn't dared to dream about since those first days of the curse. _A family._ She could still be a _mother_.

* * *

It took two years. Two years of research. Two years of looking into the adoption system in America, of navigating through the stigmas of what happened to babies born from non-TiMERed relationships. Two years of data collection of whether a single woman whose TiMER hadn't gone off yet could even adopt a baby. Two years of her firmly believing that it didn't matter, as long as the baby was loved.

It took two years and getting Gold on her side, but it worked. She got the call – there was a baby available.

She could hear the worry of the woman from the agency over the phone, that maybe because this baby was born from two people who weren't soulmates, she wouldn't want him, that he would matter less to her.

When she held Henry in her arms for the first time, she could say without a doubt that there was nothing in the world that could possibly ever matter more.

* * *

She had worn the cuffs for so long that she hadn't actually seen her numbers since she had to fill out her time remaining on the adoption paperwork. She had a general idea, but it wasn't something that she thought about. Not when she had a toddler who liked to run, didn't like to sleep, and was afraid of the dark.

On this particular night he was curled up in her arms in her bed, sobbing about the thunder and lightning and noises that were too loud. And she could have handled it – they would have been fine if the power hadn't chosen that exact moment to go out.

There were candles in the dresser on the other side of the bed and her phone had been plugged in on the opposite side of the room, but Henry only shrieked louder when she tried to move.

It was in a moment of desperation that she yanked the cuff up, letting the silver glow from the device give off just enough light so that they could see each other's faces – and he immediately settled. His sobs were now just gasps of breath and his face was still red but the terror was over.

"Momma," he whispered, his chubby fingers tracing over the edges of between the gadget and her skin with more precision than she thought he possessed. "Pretty."

She chanced a look at the numbers, then – a little more than eight years remained. Henry would be about ten when her TiMER finally beeped, and she briefly wondered how introducing someone new into her life would impact him, how they would react to this town and her child. But she couldn't worry about that now, not when her current concern was if the storm had finally stopped, if the sky would stay quiet enough to let them rest. Instead she let the silver glow sooth him as her other hand rubbed comforting circles on his back until he fell asleep against her.

In the morning the cuff had settled back into place, and she didn't dare disturb the post-storm calm.

* * *

Henry should have been waiting for her to pick him up from first grade at the front gates, but she was familiar with his habit of losing track of time. It didn't take long to spot him playing with some other kids his age, and she called out to him.

"Mommy!" he shouted excitedly. "We're playing wedding and I just got married, look!" He extended out his left arm and showed her the oval drawn clumsily on his wrist. "My TiMER went off and so I don't have any numbers, just like when I get my own!"

"You think you've already met your soulmate?"

He smiled widely and nodded his head. "I have you."

* * *

Henry was eight when he asked her about the TiMERs. "I know I'm not supposed to ask people this, but how much time do you have on yours?"

She pressed her lips together and hoped he didn't see her freeze. "If it's not polite to ask, then you shouldn't ask." He mumbled his apologies but then she sighed. "I know you're just curious. But the truth is, I haven't looked in a long time. I don't want to know." She could see the confusion on his face so she elaborated. "I find that people have a tendency to fixate on the future instead of enjoying the present. I don't want to miss a single moment of right now with you because of it."

He smiled at her answer, but he was clearly still curious. "How do they work, do you think?"

"How do you think they work?"

"I think it might be magic. Do you think it's magic?"

 _Not in this world_. She smiled warmly at him anyway, recalling those words from so long ago. "I think it might be pixie dust."

* * *

There was that tugging deep in her brain again that had existed for the past year and in greater frequency this week that she was forgetting something, but she ignored it. With Henry's recent withdrawal and disobedience, she simply didn't have time to think about it. He was more important. _This_ was more important than whatever task she had forgotten at work or home. She had planned to go outside of Storybrooke sometime during the month for supplies, but she put it off over and over again because she didn't want to leave Henry alone. Maybe that was what was causing this odd feeling.

But Henry had gone missing and she briefly wondered if whatever she had ignored had caused it, if what she had failed to identify had led to this terror that nightmares were made of – but she couldn't dwell on it. She could only concentrate on trying to Get. Henry. Back.

And even her terror got pushed away when a terrible yellow car parked on her street and Henry went rushing past her.

It could have been the relief of having Henry back, or it could have been the surprise at what he yelled about who he had found, but in one instant her head cleared, the blood stopped pounding in her ears, and she remembered what she had forgotten.

She itched to release the clasp on her cuff, to prove that the TiMER wasn't counting down the final few seconds until everything would change, but instead of a denial what came out was, " _You're_ Henry's birth mother?"

 ** _BEEP. BEEP. BEEP. BEEP. BEEP._**

"Hi."


	2. Chapter 2: Emma

**Chapter 2: Emma**

* * *

Emma's first memory was from when she was three. It was mostly just impressions of happiness – she could remember deep laughter and blue skies and falling leaves and warm arms that picked her up and held her close at the end of the day. It was the only memory like that she had.

Her second memory was the one that burned more harshly. It was the one of the same arms pushing her away, the same deep voice explaining that because she was a child given up, it meant that her parents weren't soulmates, that she didn't belong. That the people she had been calling mom and dad were soulmates and they were going to have a child of their own – one who _would_ belong.

She didn't understand then. She stomped her feet and cried and promised to be good, promised that she _could_ belong if only they would keep her.

"One day you might belong," they told her. "You just don't belong here."

* * *

Emma was eight when she got into her first real fight at school. The father in her third foster home had lost his job, and they could no longer afford to keep her. They told her that they'd try to get her back if they could, but she saw through the lie. She had heard them say that they had wanted a younger child, maybe one that wasn't so obviously born from a "non-soulmate union," whatever that had meant.

Emma had just moved in with her fourth family and changed schools for the second time. The only thing that everyone at this school talked about was the TiMERs, and Emma made the mistake of trying to contribute to the conversation. "Maybe they're actually bad," she said, and everyone went silent around her. "Maybe they _stop_ people from loving instead of helping them."

She hadn't expected the outrage from her new classmates, the absolute belief that everyone else had in the system. She should have expected the yells she heard at recess, that she didn't believe in them because she wasn't supposed to exist. That she was a mistake. That she didn't belong.

She didn't think that she had punched as many kids as she did, but almost everyone who taunted her came out of it injured. She had a scraped knuckle and was breathing hard but was otherwise unscathed, except for feeling really, really drained.

"I _will_ belong!" she yelled at them as they fled. "Just you wait! I _will_!"

* * *

Emma was twelve when the first person in her grade got their TiMER, and then every couple of weeks after that someone else got theirs. Most of them showed the blank spaces that meant that their mate hadn't gotten theirs yet, and a couple showed a countdown. The one that everyone was talking about, though, was the one that displayed that that person had already met their match.

"That's okay," the girl had said, shrugging the comments away. "It just means I already know my soulmate."

Emma envied her confidence, her belief that it didn't mean she had missed her chance, that she would discover whose TiMER also already expired. But the girl was from a stable home and had lived in the same place her whole life and hadn't really gone anywhere far away, so she probably _would_ find the person who would make her happy.

If Emma's wrist ever showed the same thing, she wouldn't know how to even attempt finding someone she'd already met, and she promised herself that she would get her TiMER as soon as she possibly could.

But her foster family barely remembered to feed her, never mind pay for a TiMER, so she would have to do it herself. She spent the summer mowing lawns and cleaning gutters for whatever she could get, and when school started up again in the fall her foster brother stole all her saved money to get his own.

She couldn't even fully be mad at him because he was older than her and she got it – the need to be told that they'll belong. She was glad even, because other than stealing her money he'd been nice to her and when he got his TiMER it had less than a year left on it; so maybe she allowed him to get _his_ happiness.

But what about hers?

He promised to make it up to her. But when his TiMER sounded it was to a boy from a nice family that was moving away from the area and when they saw the bruises from their foster father's beating, the family took him with them.

Her social worker moved her to a new home. Despite the lack of food, at least the last one had a door on her room. In this home, she wasn't able to keep anything safe, let alone save any money of her own, and the fear of missing the only chance to belong grew.

* * *

She would disappear for days at a time, and no one from her home would notice. She had a few friends where the parents took pity on her, letting her crash on their couch and making sure she got fed at least once a day, but school was more difficult because she didn't have the foundations, and who could concentrate when she never had enough to eat?

She could see the way the parents looked at her sometimes – with pity and sadness, and as much as she appreciated them helping her out, she knew that money was tight for them too. She couldn't take so much from others who barely had more than she did.

Her stomach was growling and she found herself inside a grocery store, staring longingly at the food on the shelves. Her dream of a TiMER was even further out of reach that it had been before, and even if she had money, she'd be spending it on meals, not a piece of technology.

And then she met Lily. Wonderful Lily, whose match hadn't had their TiMER installed yet but didn't need the numbers because she had a star to tell her she was special. Understanding Lily who saw _her_ and didn't care about the scars or that she didn't belong.

Beautiful Lily who drew a star on one of Emma's wrists and an expired TiMER on the other, saying that maybe she _had_ already met her soulmate.

Terrible Lily who lied, lied because she _did_ belong to a family and was too stubborn to see how she already had everything that Emma had ever wanted.

Emma washed at the drawn TiMER and scrubbed at the star and tried to convince herself that maybe she didn't need to belong.

* * *

Ingrid didn't have a TiMER. She said she didn't need one. She didn't need a soulmate to make her happy, that taking care of the children that were treated unfairly because of them was all she needed in life.

Emma sometimes wondered if maybe Ingrid once had a TiMER but had missed her chance. Or maybe her soulmate died, or the numbers never appeared so she had hers removed. Because how could someone throw away a chance at happiness?

But when Ingrid smoothed Emma's hair down when she was upset and held her close, Emma almost believed that she didn't need a soulmate to belong, that she could find happiness in this sort of a family too.

Once Ingrid turned out to be an actual crazy person and Emma ran away, the first thing she did was steal enough money to get her TiMER installed. When the silver glow started and the numbers lit up, she breathed – actually breathed – for the first time that she could remember.

There was someone out there for her. Someone who she belonged to, and they belonged to her.

She quickly did the rough math: she would be twenty seven or twenty eight when her TiMER went off. She was more than halfway there. She had survived this long; she could survive another thirteen years.

Especially with the promise of someone waiting for her.

* * *

He was nice.

He was a bit strange but he was nice, and after he managed to get them both away from a cop while in a doubly stolen car, she figured that she could do a lot worse. She _had_ done a lot worse, so maybe she could deal with strange but nice in a situation that she got to choose.

Strange but nice went by Neal and it very quickly became clear that he was just as lost in this world as she was, that he was simply looking for a place to belong. His TiMER would go off around the same as hers (though he was older), but he said he didn't mind, that they could make their own way until then.

Strange but nice was also caring and cute and it was so easy to agree with him about how they shouldn't have to wait, how everyone had bought into a corporation's vision for happiness and what if this, right now, was where they belonged? That the future or potential of a soulmate shouldn't interfere with the present, and wasn't it nice to have someone now?

Up to that point she had displayed her TiMER proudly as if to say, _Here, world, is your proof that Emma Swan belongs_ – but he sold her a dream called Tallahassee and she covered her wrist with a cheap sweat band and thought that _Yes, she belongs right now_.

When they were alone at night and he held her close and the sweat band was all she wore, he traced the edges of it and told her he'd get her something nice to cover it, that he had a plan so that Tallahassee could be real.

The watch became evidence and Tallahassee shattered and she promised to herself that she would never again forget, that she would never again not believe. The worst part was that she _had_ loved Neal. She loved him because he saw her and didn't hurt her and he told her that she mattered. He told her that she mattered and she sensed no lie in his words; she mattered to him. And yet, it wasn't enough.

She whispered her apologies in the soft silver glow to a person she had never met and traced the numbers she hadn't looked at months. Eleven years. In eleven years, she _would_ be enough.

She couldn't decide if that made Neal's betrayal hurt more or less. Less, because there was still someone out there for her. More, because she should have known better.

It was Lily all over again, except this time she did it to herself.

* * *

"We have a very select type of clientele," the woman from the adoption agency said to her in the stark white visiting room. "There's a growing demand from people who won't meet their soulmates until later in life, past when they would be able to have children. It's with one of these people that we want to place your baby."

"It'll be loved?" Emma asked hesitantly, quietly, as if anything louder might break the possibility.

The woman nodded fiercely. "You'll be giving it its best chance, and you'll be giving yourself your best one as well."

Emma traced the numbers on her wrist. It was true: society didn't think much of people who had children out of a soulmate union if their TiMER would go off while they were still young. "Its best chance," she repeated, and signed the papers in front of her.

She never thought _these_ would be the adoption papers that would have her name on them.

* * *

She was twenty-four. She wasn't happy, but the promise of happiness remained.

She had an apartment in a decent area of town. She had a job as a bail bonds-person that she was good at. She didn't have a lot of friends, but she didn't have a lot of spare time anyway.

The only time she ever covered the numbers was when she was after a mark. Sometimes she pretended that her TiMER was blank. Sometimes she pretended that her soulmate was decades in her future. But even with the numbers covered, she always knew within the hour how much time was left.

She once again displayed the numbers proudly. Sure, she'd had a few companions to make the time pass more quickly, but she guarded herself – to never again fall into the fantasy of what a relationship feels like. She didn't belong yet, but she knew she would.

* * *

The company always told TiMER wearers to go about their day normally, but to take any offer given to them. To go to work, but when a co-worker asks you to lunch, to go along. They said that the TiMER knew, that somehow, everything will fall into place.

Except that Emma grabbed her mark earlier than expected and the paperwork had been a breeze. The cheque was going to be deposited directly into her account, so she didn't have to go to the bank. She hadn't made plans because she thought she was going to be working and if this was a normal birthday she would be getting herself drunk and passing out on the couch before midnight.

But this wasn't a normal birthday, and she had less than five hours to go.

Home was normally where she would go, though, and the urge to take off her heels was strong, so she made her way to her apartment and found the cupcake that she had bought for herself just in case.

Normally she would wish for the strength she required to make it to twenty-eight, make it until she found where she belonged, but this year she hovered over the lit candle and paused at _I wish_.

She watched the candle burn down trying to decide which fleeting thought was the most important – that her match would be good looking? That the first meeting went well? That it would be clear and obvious who her TiMER was ringing for?

She finally settled on not a wish at all, but a goodbye to not belonging.

* * *

The kid... the kid was not what she was expecting when she opened the door, and on another night she might have called a cop friend to explain, maybe would have gotten someone else to escort him home, but today she was supposed to go with whatever opportunities came up.

It made a certain amount of sense – sending her to a town she had never heard of to meet someone that she never had before. She tried to pump him for information about the town, about who lived there, about whose TiMER might be going off soon, but he was preoccupied with other things, and she still had her TiMER covered from earlier.

She wanted to worry about a lot of things, but instead she quietly studied the kid with her chin and Neal's smile. He had Neal's confidence, too, and she wondered if that was hereditary, or if he had grown up in a home that gave that to him naturally.

She wanted to worry about her soulmate living in the same small town where her child, but instead focused on his vocabulary, that he looked well-dressed and well-fed and even though he was fighting with his mom, he seemed taken care of and like he had a good life. It seemed like he had everything that she had ever wanted for him – everything she had ever wanted for herself.

She wanted to worry but then she was in Storybrooke and she pulled off her cuff and had to decide whether breathing or tamping down her grin was a more important use of her energy.

And then there was a man with a dog directing her to a house and then there was only minutes left to go, and then she was there and there were two people standing in front of her and -

And her head was snapping between the two of them because she'd be happy with either but of _course_ her soulmate would be helping the kid's adoptive mom look for him.

Emma was trying to get a read on the guy but the woman was talking to her and wouldn't _that_ just be perfect. " _You're_ Henry's birth mother?" she said and then Emma saw a moment of realization on her face milliseconds before the beeping started in tandem.

She gulped and wonders if the feeling surging through her was happiness or fear, and all she could manage was a sheepish grin.

"Hi."


End file.
